Goals for BRS v0.4

In my original plan, v0.4 was going to be all about implementing ship systems. I'm pretty excited to get started on this, but it's going to have to wait until the next version. My goals for v0.3 were a bit overambitious, and I ended up cutting out enough to justify an additional version release just to make up the difference. The focus of v0.3 shifted at some point from prepping for ship systems to implementing some basic gameplay. I'm still happy with this decision, but it means that there's still more to do before I can move on.

The major thing that I decided to put off was the ship redesign. This didn't do anything to support the gameplay aspects that I was working on so when I realized that it was going to be more difficult than expected I just said "yeah fuck that". It is important, however, that I get the ship interior in order before moving on to systems, and the exterior is just fucking embarrassing. The big roadblock here is that I know fuck all about 3D modeling. I've done a few Blender tutorials, some of which make cameos in BRS (shout out to those sick coffee mugs in the city stations) but I have a lot of learning to do still. If I can get to the point where I'm spending 70% as much time making models that are only 70% as embarrassing, I'll consider that a reasonable success.

This will also be a good time to implement ship exterior customization. I want to make the ship designs modular so that players can really dial in the look of their ship. This will be totally optional and purely cosmetic, but I think it'll be fun and anything that makes the player feel more invested in their ship is a good thing. Customization options will be very limited to begin with, but I imagine a future where every province has its own color scheme and ship style, with certain parts only available at certain stations, so players who want to can put a good deal of effort into pimping their rides.

So ship redesign & customization will be the main goals of v0.4, but there's a bunch of other stuff that I'd like to include if I have time. This might be a good opportunity to redesign the planets & moons, maybe start dialing in a visual style for the game, you know, make it not look like complete shit, and I'd like to add at least a little bit of new gameplay on the off chance that some weirdo out there is just waiting for a good excuse to start a new game by the time I get through all this.

All that said, I really haven't done shit in the past month. I think I just needed a break after finally hitting the v0.3 milestone. Here's to next month?

NOICE